Delegations from China and the United States were set to continue their talks in Madrid into a second day on Monday over trade tensions and an imminent deadline for Chinese divestment from the short-video app TikTok.

The latest round of negotiations, the fourth in four months, took place at the baroque Palacio de Santa Cruz that houses Spain's foreign ministry and concluded its first day on Sunday after about six hours with no indication of a breakthrough.

Talks had centred on TikTok, tariffs and the economy, a US government official said, offering no further details.

Delegations led by Vice Premier He Lifeng and US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent have been meeting in European cities since May to try to resolve differences that prompted US President Donald Trump to raise tariffs on Chinese imports and sparked tit-for-tat measures, including China imposing similarly high import duties for American goods and halting the flow of rare earths to the US.

The delegations last met in Stockholm in July, where they agreed to extend for 90 days a trade truce that sharply reduced triple-digit retaliatory tariffs on both sides and restarted the rare-earth exports from China to the United States. (Reuters)